


on the sucrosi road

by SolaSola



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Because for all the happiness of the epilogue, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, Caramelinda centric, Character Study, Episode Tag, Gen, I still believe Cara's post-canon is one of the most tragic d20 endings, Post-Episode: s05e17 For Candia! (Part 2), With the slightest hope for healing but it's mostly wallowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolaSola/pseuds/SolaSola
Summary: Some days, she feels bitter and not sweet as all. Those days, she feels none of the strength that the Rocks say lies in sweetness. They say Queen Caramelinda is the heart of the realm but she feels bitter and weak and scared and once again Cara of House Meringue, a heart adrift in a body that has forgotten its own core.  Those days, she wonders if it would be better if another kingdom had taken the imperial throne after all.[Cara, in the after]
Relationships: Amethar Rocks & Caramelinda Rocks
Comments: 20
Kudos: 32





	on the sucrosi road

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for mentions of canon-typical violence and death.

Caramelinda stands by the carriage and buries her hands in the draft meep's soft fluff as her husband lingers by the gates of castle candy to talk to his daughter one last time before they go. Both his daughters.

Is it strange, she wonders, that she feels more imprisoned now than she ever did in Castle Candy. She's out here in the open air, hands stroking over the skin of this soft marshmallowy beast and hoping it'll hide them shaking. 

Frankly, she should have felt far more trapped in the walls of this very castle. For twenty years she ruled here with a snake of a man at her husband’s right hand, and to be honest at her own. She looks back and can see the signs, wonders whether Calroy thought she was a tool he could use or a figurehead he didn't need to bother with. Wonders whether he didn’t bother hiding his scheming from her as much as he could have. It doesn't matter, really, but she doesn't know which is worse. But even Calroy wasn’t enough to make Caramelinda feel unsafe in Castle Candy, not until the very night he chased her out of it. 

Her husband’s title has a “sovereign” in it that Caramelinda’s will never have, even for the twenty years she has spent with her hands writing its laws and her mind keeping her up at night to make the decisions her husband will not. Her claim to a throne has always been by marriage not blood and studying statecraft has always been like pulling taffy straight out of herself, something that takes strength. But even under the weight of all that, of ruling a land that she was never meant to have to rule alone, Caramelinda has never felt more trapped than she does now. 

Her husband is the emperor. "If you don't go," she had told him what feels like a lifetime ago, "Then another kingdom will sit on the Concordant Throne."

Some days, she feels bitter and not sweet as all. Those days, she feels none of the strength that the Rocks say lies in sweetness. They say Queen Caramelinda is the heart of the realm but she feels bitter and weak and scared and once again Cara of House Meringue, a heart adrift in a body that has forgotten its own core. Those days, she wonders if it would be better if another kingdom had taken the imperial throne after all. 

Her husband swore on the book of St. Citrina he was not worthy of Candia's throne no matter how much he wanted it. But they are going now, the meeps harnessed to the carriage and the Knights of North-Gumbia standing alongside the Queen's Champion to escort them, to Comida where he thinks he will be worthy to be emperor.

Where, more accurately, Caramelinda has been deemed worthy to run the empire for him. Her husband has not so much as told her that he will be placing this duty on her shoulders, but Caramelinda can’t help but know it unspoken. 

It is almost mechanically that she watches her husband hug both his daughters (Caramelinda has already said very formal goodbyes. She has shaken the hand of the new queen of Candia and she has pressed a kiss to Ruby’s forehead and reminded her to study up if she is to be an advisor to the queen) and allows herself to be helped up into the carriage. She smooths spun-sugar skirts over her lap and folds her hands carefully and directs her gaze out the window so that she need not look directly at the castle that she is regretfully leaving and the husband she is regretfully accompanying. 

There are no words for what Caramelinda is other than _shocked_ when Amethar speaks first. 

“Euh. Caramelinda,” he says. “I know just me saying it probably doesn’t mean that much to you. But I wanted you to know I’m really gonna try, and be emperor. I know it’s what you wanted, when I went to Comida, and I didn’t want it then.”

When Cara thinks about the Concordant Empire, she thinks about what it has taken from her. She never saw Lazuli dead on the battlefield at Pangranos with waking eyes, but she has dreamed of her love’s body lying studded with arrows in a million dreams. Her dreams are, if that is even possible, crueler than life, supplying her with not one but a million different images of what Lazuli looked like dying for an empire she would never see born. That she would leave behind Cara to see.

Amethar is wrong—it is not what she wanted. But this—this might be.

What “this” is is Amethar rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly and saying, “I wanna ask you for some advice, about what I need to learn. I still can’t read for shit, so I don’t really know what I can do, but—”

Cara takes a weird breath that is not shaky exactly, but very confused. Amethar looks like he did when Cara was first at Castle Candy—he looks like Laz’s little brother, growing into his own body and not really sure how to talk to his big sister’s betrothed for all they were nearly the same age. “Amethar, you have actively avoided statecraft for your entire life, and your entire reign as well.” It takes effort not to bite off the words. Cara thinks she manages neutral, at least.

“How can I do better?” Amethar asks, and he’s honest, she’ll give him that. Cara thinks back to her all but pulling her husband into their chambers to read the last letter they’d ever get written in the hand of the late Emperor Uvano. He’d said the same, an offhand “how can I do better,” talking about the girls. “I wanna do better,” Amethar says again now.

Cara sighs and says, “Yes, we can talk statecraft, Amethar, in Comida.”

Cara has spent many years of her life unallowed to be scared. She has spent the past months being allowed almost nothing else but to be scared, to live surrounded by all her worst fears coming true and walking around her in the flesh, and then to find still more worst fears she somehow must still work to prevent.

Her daughter looked her in the eye surrounded by bodies and rubble on the sugargrass outside the gates of their castle and asked that Cara extend family (the family that is not Cara’s by anything other than a fragile political marriage) to a woman Cara still doesn’t really know. The new queen Cara has left behind on her old throne in Castle Candy is someone she still fears, in her darkest days and in nights it takes very little to turn dark. 

Cara has only ever wanted two things: to love Lazuli, and to defend the nation Lazuli loved. In the past months, she has added a third thing she wants with all her heart: to live unafraid.

Cara thinks she may never know if she could have done better at the first two. She takes slow breaths and dismisses Amethar to talk later and doesn’t know if she will ever have a chance to do the third one at all. 

The meeps’ harnesses jingle, and the carriage does its best to cushion the concordant emperor and empress from the bumps of the Sucrosi road (now twice as long as it once was and full of potholes as it goes over new-made ground ripped wholesale from a wish). Whatever magic Liam did on the field of Castle Candy has made Candia even harder to leave than it would have been, and Cara can’t help but think that it’s fitting. 

But the carriage rolls on and Cara is being ripped from the only land she ever wanted to defend, to be empress of a Concord that took Lazuli from her. She is afraid (what else would she be) and she can feel the hum of the little Candian arcana she knows growing ever-so-slightly fainter as they leave Candia. 

And life rolls on, and perhaps Cara will sigh a lot and teach Amethar statecraft, and perhaps the duty she felt descending on to her shoulders in an all-too-familiar weight will not be wholly hers to carry after all. She is scared, and unmagical, and unsure. But perhaps after all her family have done to drag a peace into this world, there is somewhere a peace Cara can drag into herself. 

**Author's Note:**

> you can thank the crown of candy finale for the approximately 1982473 tumblr posts and one fic i've written tonight. this is probably the fastest i've ever written, but i've been absolutely possessed by a love for the rocks women and i want to write _everything_ right now. 
> 
> i just. the crown of candy finale is probably my favorite d20 finale so far but i'll be damned if my heart doesn't bleed for the cara of the epilogue, probably the saddest allied-with-the-PCs NPC in any d20 finale. i just want her to heal in a more magical candia and learn to love her daughter and stepdaughter but i also don’t know how or where she can as concordant empress. so i found 1.4k words about it somewhere, i guess! 
> 
> also, mad props to all creators of the d20 transcripts—i had about four different episodes open to reference during this. 
> 
> kudos and comments feed my lil creator soul like riz chowing down on kalvaxus, and I reply to every comment!
> 
> this fic is rebloggable [here](https://acedetectivegukgak.tumblr.com/post/625682324022050816/on-the-sucrosi-road-solasola-dimension-20-web) on my d20 tumblr, [@acedetectivegukgak](https://acedetectivegukgak.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
